1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of computer aided design tools. More specifically, the present invention relates to methods and apparatuses associated with assisting a designer in exploring a multi-element design, e.g., an integrated circuit (IC) having a large number of interconnected circuit elements.
2. Background Information
As price/performance of computing technology continues to improve, increasingly computers are employed to assist a designer in performing various design tasks. As a result, designers are able to engage more complex designs, which in turn lead to greater demand for computerized assistance.
For example, in the design and fabrication of ICs, improvements in the price/performance of computing technology-had made possible numerous automations in IC design as well as IC fabrication processes. As a result, increasingly more complex ICs, having multiple millions of transistors, are being designed and fabricated. In turn, the IC designers have become more reliant on electronic design automation (EDA) tools to assist them in managing the complexity and diagnosing design problems, to sustain their productivity and effectiveness. More specifically, in the area of IC design, virtually all complex IC designs are being synthesized employing synthesis tools. Typically, a circuit designer would specify an IC design on a textual basis, employing one of a number of high level hardware languages, such as very Large Scale Integration (VSLI) Hardware Design Language (VHDL). The text based design specification is in turn provided to a synthesis tool to generate the circuit elements and their interconnections. Most synthesis tools will generate complementary schematic diagrams for the textually design. However, by virtue of to complexity of the design and the fact that the designer has specified the design in a textual approach, the schematic diagrams are usually very large, very difficult to manipulate, and very hard for the designer to comprehend or use to aid in diagnosing a design problem. Thus, more computerized assistance is required to enable the designer to utilize these schematics effectively. Various design and diagnostic tools have emerged to provide such assistance. Some are able to generate functional block diagrams to supplement the huge unwieldy schematics, while other diagnostic tools will report critical paths or design problems, such as timing violations, in graphical form. Nevertheless, circuit designers have found the current generation of EDA tools to be inadequate in their flexibility in assisting them in dealing with the ever more complex IC designs.
Similar problems exist in other fields. For examples, in understanding or managing the wiring of complex machinery, such as the space shuttle, or a commercial airliner, or in the understanding/management of cabling for a complex communication network having a large number of “nodes”.
Thus, a more effective and user friendly approach to assisting designers in exploring or analyzing complex designs is desired.